Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Second District Court Judge Alan Malott is most likely not even interested in what anyone wants to call themselves in this county but it is the duty of a officer of the court system to place limits on how one individual can twist a system designed to help people to provoke specific individuals in this state. The local press does have the right to refuse to print offense language and pictures within its pages. In this case freedom of speech comes into conflict with freedom of the press both of which are major constitutional issues.

If the individual in questions wants to start their own newspaper, create a website or just stand out on the corner in a public place and scream such language there is little to stop them but because they are trying to force their poor language on to a company run by another individual they cross the line of free enterprise and the freedom of the press. No court should be allowed to force a newspaper in this country to print something that would offend their readers. Not that many people read those dead tree newspapers in this state any longer.

As for denying the name change request if it is linked to the ability to publish the name change request then there is a clear and present problem with the law because Bernalillo County has a very limited number of newspapers due to the decline in publishing companies. The local newspaper should not be the factor that determines where or not a name is acceptable. It is clear in the language of the law that if one county does not have a newspaper then the nearest one could be used so why not also a website. Clearly the law in this case has not been corrected as to reflex the current issues of limited sources of hard copy publishing. In a larger city with more papers there should be at least one that would be willing to publish offense material such as this individual’s desired name. Perhaps the state legislature should consider changing the law to say either a newspaper or a website that reaches individuals within the county.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Over the holiday weekend my brother, who is a devoted republican, asked me if I believed that our new governor would reduce the salaries of educational administration in order to balance the budget without cutting support staff or teachers. I told him that I would believe it when and if I see it.

I am sure that the lobbyists have already been whispering in her ear about how we are not needed to help what one lobbyist called the “little brown children.” I found myself pointing a finger in his fat drunk face as I told him off for that remark. He may not use those exact words but the result lobbyists desire are just the same no matter what the language they might use to convince our elected representatives that our children in all their many colors don’t deserve the best education that we can afford in this state.

Cutting from the classroom like some legislatures along with the ERB board will only make us 50th in the country when it comes to education. Giving School Presidents big shiny costly toys and then explaining them away as needed is not the type of reports that we need to hear from the local press. No one should be getting new trucks or large new buildings at a time when we cannot afford to pay the salaries of current teachers and support staff who work in those glass castles. More vice presidents and administrators getting $100,000 salaries and calling it reorganizing is nothing more then lies sugar coated as reform. Rather then cutting programs offered to students maybe cuts should go through the top educational administration level in all of our school systems.

I had cancer and had to take eight months off without pay as I was treated so why should a president of our largest university be treated any different? It is not that I don’t feel for him as a person. I just think that family medical leave should be paid for all or for no one at all because that is only the fair way to provide that type of benefit.

Maybe educational administration in this state should take the Bill Gates pledge and start giving money back to the needy in this state. They can start by firing all their high paid lobbyists and doing the job themselves to start with so that I don’t get the chance in the future to point my finger in anyone else’s face. Must admit that it felt good.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

It was pointed out in the Albuquerque Journal today that not everyone has a retirement fund like the one educators and educational staff have in this state. This is true but what they forgot to say was that this is in return for a lower pay while working in the field. We all know that people working in the field of education take a pay cut from the very beginning and don’t earn the same salary or wages for their degrees that some would in the industry they are trained in.

I for one would be making a lot more money working as an accountant but instead I help train new accountants because our state very much needs honest hardworking people in that field of study. So why dose State Senator John A. Smith and State Senator Tim Jennings so much care for these changes in educational retirement funding? Maybe because they have no vested interest in providing our state with well educated employees and they have no vested interest in the public education system in this state. Perhaps they want our state to be 50th in the nation when it comes to education.

They won’t tell voters that this decision which they so whole heartily support is encouraging the most experienced instructors in our educational system to retire now so as not to loss out on their retirement benefits. After all would you want to be forced to retire at a later age knowing that you will not live long enough to collect any of the money you were forced to put into a retire fund? Educational employees don’t get to say no when it come to paying into their retirement fund even if it forces them to not be able to pay daily bills. How many New Mexicans earning far more each year decide not to have a retirement fund simply because they feel they cannot afford it?

Tell an educational employee who is a single mother making $22,000 a year that she will have to pay more into her retirement fund when she is having problems keeping a working car and putting food on the table for her own child. Tell her that some rich old white fat man in Santa Fe thinks that she is earning too much when she is already facing cuts to her pay from the budget and now even though there is not a current threat to the fund she will be forced to pay more to a retirement fund which is spending the money on outrages uncontrolled lawyer feeds for people who are being investigated for wrong doing. For double dippers who have already retired and are still allowed to work while not paying into the fund. For school presidents who make hundred of thousands of dollars each year just to tell their employees that they might not have a job in the near future.

How many educational employees who are too young to retire will be forced to move back into the industry to make ends met taking those jobs from less educated, less experience individuals while failing to properly educate our children for the future? Clearly fat old white men in Santa Fe don’t care about our state or our children but only about who buys their drinks at the country club and the local bars. Maybe the time is coming soon to replace those individuals in Santa Fe with people who care about our children and our states working poor.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Democratic State Auditor Hector Balderas has come a long way from his poor beginnings in Wagon Mount, New Mexico to a victory party at the Albuquerque Country Club last evening which starts his second term in that state position. Unlike some Balderas has not forgotten the people who first got him to his position. He does not care about party connections or who has given him the most money. His job is to investigate corruption within our state government. His job is to stop financial waste of taxpayer’s dollars. Yet over the past four years when every other department was raking in huge sums of money his division was carefully overlooked when it came to funding.

The new governor could go a long way toward keeping her promise of honest open government and cleaning out Santa Fe by financing the state auditor’s office so they could afford to investigate more and work toward developing cases that would clean out government waste and corruption.

One of the first things that our new female governor will need is an honest accounting of exactly where the money in our state is going and where the waste is so that “the fat” can be cut before Santa Fe with all of its overpaid power drunken lobbyists are once more allowed to spin the heads of state representatives at the experience of our children’s future.

Already government leaders in Santa Fe are talking about cutting into teacher’s pay and retirement funding without even looking at the top heavy educational administration which has been a justifiable target of our hard working state auditor for the last four years.

How can the governor and state representatives possibly cut government waste when one of the very organizations designed to investigate such waste is so poorly funded? It would appear that the main weakness in this state is funding enforcement agencies that could prevent waste and corruption at the state government level. Stricter rules should govern the amount of influence lobbyists are able to have over state representatives in Santa Fe. Our state halls of government should not be echo chambers for what overpaid lobbyists whisper into elected official’s ears. If these problems are not dealt with by our new governor then the results can only be more waste of taxpayer’s dollars and even more corruption at a time when the voter public can least afford it.

Monday, November 8, 2010

We all know that the finer things in life make for a more refined culture to live in which in turn makes it a safer place to live so the question is do liberals own those values or is it something that can be owned by both parties. One has to wonder that when our first female governor takes office will things change for our state.

Will Susana reach out to the more refined corporate individuals in this state in order to develop an active cultural community? Will she see the need for the arts in our communities and in our schools? Most women have more respect for the more refined activities in life and less so for major sports.

The arts such as music and theater are well known to smooth some of the rough edges off of a society and make them more caring for other individuals. I have to admit that one of the things I liked most about Mayor Marty Chavez was his respect for the arts in this city. He worked hard to bring that experience to all levels of society in our fair city. He knew the value of teaching a respect for the arts to our children. He worked hard to promote the arts by providing free events to our families and our children.

Our current mayor has done nothing to encourage the arts over the past few months. He has failed to think outside of the box when it comes to ways to encourage the arts in our city. He does not promote cultural events or encourage large businesses to spent time or money on these projects. Why not develop a corporate/school partnership that would support and promote the arts in our high schools.

We saw large corporations spend millions of dollars to attempt to buy the races here in New Mexico so why not spend some of that kind of money to provide up-to-day and state-of-the-arts performing arts centers for our schools, our city and our county. This would be a great place for corporations to place their name on cultural centers for the performing arts. This would be a great way for corporations to give back to the communities and the people who buy their products.

Why is our current mayor so ill refined and so rough around the edges? What will Susana bring to that mix? Are the Arts truly a liberal domain only in this state?

Sunday, November 7, 2010

I have to admit to being dumbfounded by all that I hear from the local media when it comes to their trying to figure out why some democratic candidates in this state won election this year while others lost badly when they started out so strong. You hear that it is the wave of anger from conservative parts of the Republican Party. Yet when we look at election results we see candidates on both sides who pulled votes from the other party. They blame it on Governor Richardson because his administration made the words pay-to-play a house hold word yet he was never convicted of any wrong doing during his time in office. Governor Richardson was also out of the state for most of the past two years while the lieutenant governor ran state government.

So if not those reasons then why would one elected official win while another loss this year. Voters are not so simple when it comes to how they vote. An elected official who fails to understand that fact will almost always loss. Voters look for people who represent their major issues. Someone who can show support for the middle class and the working poor especially when times are hard. They want someone who is willing to take responsibility for past votes and stands on issues. Someone who can voice the reasons in a intelligent understandable manner for why they voted for an issue or why they stood against any issue without becoming angry for being ask their reasoning. Voters want to feel that an elected official is listening to them and not defending the people or problems that they are trying to convey.

Candidates need to find ways to explain to the voters what they can and cannot do for them without making them feel like their issues don’t matter. The last thing voters want to hear is that democratic officials who failed to get elected this year learned nothing from their defeat and that they do not yet understand what issues and abilities they should work on in the future.

The Democratic Party has a lot of good people who care about the voters and want to make the economy better for all New Mexicans no matter what their sex, age, or race. The voters will be carefully watching all elected officials over the next two years to see how they put into practice their campaign promises. I hope that no matter which party they represent that they will work for the good of all New Mexicans in this state.

One reframe I head lately from a tutor who was told by their college president that a 5% cut was coming this year is; “Oh Susana don’t you cry for me, just help me keep my job so I can continue to support the students.” It will be interesting to see the effect of those president’s lobbying on their own behalf while justifying why they want to cut student support. If those presidents want to see bonds pass in the future then they should aim those moneys at supporting students and not at enlarging their current administration yet again .

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"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die."

The O'Coilean (O'Collins)

'A great host with whom it is not fortunate to contend, the battle-trooped host of the O'Coileain."Abraham Lincoln

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."From NPR Radio"Rosa sat so Martin could walk.Martin walked so Obama could run.Obama ran so our children can fly!"

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Albert Einstein

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."Will Rogers"I don't belong to an organized party--I'm a democrat."President John F. Kennedy, Democrat“If by a ‘liberal’ they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties—someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a ‘Liberal,’ then I’m proud to say I’m a ‘Liberal.’”Martin Luther King Jr.

"Faith is taking the first step, even when you don't see the whole staircase."

Lora O'Brien

"All I can do is share one person's experiences on her own path, not tell you how to walk yours. If a guru is what you are looking for, find another! If I am a teacher, it is because I am already walking the path that you, Dear Reader, may wish to be on. Although each of us must make our own way, I can put up signs at least, and make the way slightly less hazardous for those who wish to walk a similar path."

C. S. Lewis

"Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives."

A Female Democrat

1/1/10 A new year and a number of future elections to cover. The budget will be a major issue this year and we must work hard to protect the core values of our party.